


my best goodbye

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Coda, F/M, Head Injury, Kissing, Season 3 Spoilers, Spoilers, this might help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's a surprise how hard it is to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my best goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like I needed to do a short Stiles/Cora coda for the episode as well. As always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, I just like to play with them.

When Stiles climbs out of the root cellar, it is Cora who grips his right hand and Derek who grips his left, hauling him awkwardly out of the hole. He stumbles when his feet find solid ground, head spinning from the injury earlier, pain and shock setting in now that his adrenalin is fading. Cora wraps her arms around him to steady him, smiling slightly when he gives her a bewildered look. “Are we friends?” he asks.

“Have you lost your memory?” she counters.

He laughs, the sound dry and rough in his dust-coated throat. “No. Definitely not. I just… we…”

“Sh.” She lightly brushes the hair back from his forehead, hissing when she finds the blood dried against his skin. “You need to have this looked at, Stiles. You can’t fuck around with a head injury.”

 _You’re only human_. He hears the words as clearly as if she said them, and he pulls himself away, wavering to stand on his own. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not. And that’s okay.” She steps close again, both hands touching his face now. She’s a tactile person, he realizes, her fingers sliding back to thread comfortingly through his hair, as if she hadn’t just been at death’s door herself recently.

Hah.

He wonders if she can feel it too, if she crossed that little barrier between here and there when she stopped breathing, if they have that shared experience. “I died too,” he says quietly, and her smile flickers.

“I heard. Lydia told me that she brought you back?” Her voice lilts up at the end as if it is a question, even though it’s presented as a fact.

“She helped.” Lydia has been Stiles’s anchor for so long he can’t imagine a world where she wouldn’t be able to bring him back from the edge. On the other hand, at this exact moment, Lydia and Aidan and Ethan are all working together to pull parents from the hole before the roof finishes collapsing, and Stiles can see the soft smile Lydia has when she looks at Aidan.

Someone is going to have to remind her what Aidan _did_. What he has _been_ as an enemy to their pack.

_They’re still human. Well, wolves. Give them a second chance, it’s not their fault they were fucked with when they were too young to know better._

Stiles wonders, for a moment, if he hears Scott’s voice in his mind because he knows him that well, or if it is something else. He glances at Scott, but his best friend doesn’t look back. Okay, so he’s imagining it. Maybe it’s the head injury. Either that or he has a newly installed Scott-voiced conscience, and Stiles really isn’t sure how he feels about that.

“Stiles, sit down before you fall down.” Cora guides him to a place where it’s safe to put his ass, and he crumples to the ground, letting it hold him upright when he really thinks lying down would be a better option. She crouches next to him, hand against his back, fingers at the nape of his neck. “Do you want me to take you to the hospital? I can come back and get Derek and the others later.”

Stiles shakes his head before he thinks better of it. “No. I just… I need a little time. To recuperate. It’s the being dead thing… I barely had time to get over that, and now I’m here, and my Jeep… damnit, my _Jeep_.” That car is his baby, bought and paid for with his own money, carefully saved over two summers of doing every odd job he could get his hands on. He bends his knees and puts his elbows on them, head in his heads. His fingers come back sticky and he looks at the blood. “Oh. That’s what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, Stiles, that is _exactly_ what I’m talking about.” Cora folds herself to sit next to him, leaning into him until he leans back, letting her take his weight. “You’re barely here right now.” Her fingers drift along his arm, down to his hand, tangling with his. “You owe me something, but I’m not going to take it now.”

“I owe… what?” Stiles isn’t following her at all.

She touches his cheek and waits until he meets her eyes. “You said that the next time we locked lips, I’d better be conscious for it. Well, I’m saying the same to you, okay? But you’d better hurry it up, because Derek and I need to leave for a little while.”

Stiles is pretty sure that Cora Hale just ordered him to kiss her.

He’s also pretty sure Derek’s going to hurt him for this, but he doesn’t really care.

He moves slowly, making sure that the world doesn’t tilt as he reaches for her. He frames her face and he takes it slow, because even though it’s _him_ kissing _her_ , it’s almost as surprising as when Heather grabbed him or when Lydia kissed him during the panic attack. He still can’t quite believe that he’s doing it, his lips meeting Cora’s, her mouth slipping open beneath his, quiet and slow.

“That was…”

“Not bad.” Cora tilts her head. “For a first time. We’ll have to practice.”

“I am all in on the idea of practicing,” Stiles says quickly, because while he’s pretty sure the world is still spinning slightly, he’s not so incoherent that he can’t make good decisions. “But did you say something about leaving?”

She nods. “Just for a while, I hope. There’s something we need to do, and it’s a good time. Derek needs… he needs some time away. And I won’t let him go alone. He’s been alone too much.”

“What about Peter?” Because Stiles can’t forget the psychotic also-once-dead Hale.

Cora shrugs. “He’s not coming with us. We haven’t seen him since things ended.” 

Stiles doesn’t know how he feels about that, but it’s something to set aside for later. Instead, he draws her close and kisses her again, curious if it was an open invitation to practice _now_. When she responses with a low sigh, her tongue against his lips, he decides that yes, yes it was.

The sound of a cleared throat breaks them apart. “Hey, big guy,” Stiles says when he sees whose shoes are standing next to him. The fact that Derek isn’t automatically strangling him seems to be a good sign, but maybe he’s just waiting for the head injury to do the job for him.

“Up you go.” Derek wedges one hand under Stiles’s arm and Cora nudges in on the other side. Together they get him to his feet, and he leans heavily as they bring him to the car. “You two can finish your conversation in the car. But make it quick; as soon as we get everyone loaded, you’re being dropped off at home. We have to pack.”

His voice is low, and Stiles wonders how many people he’s going to tell before he leaves. It doesn’t really matter much to him at the moment.

Cora stands with him at the car, helping him in and settling in close against his hip once he’s seated. She waits until Derek leaves before she says quietly, “I’m going to miss you, you know. Try not to get yourself killed again while I’m gone. Because if you do, I will resurrect you and kill you myself when I get back.”

“Same,” Stiles says quietly, and he kisses her then because his head aches, and he can’t find words, but he can _do_ something which says what he’s thinking and feeling and he tries to tell her how much he’s going to miss her.

Whatever it is they’re doing, he hopes it doesn’t take long, and that it’s safe. In the meantime, he just does his best to say goodbye.


End file.
